Posted July 21, 2010
This release was plagued with a terrible bug that made saving or restoring your progress impossible on most Vista/7 user's machines. But GOG has since corrected the error and I've had the chance to play the game again for the first time in a decade.
The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time is the sequel to the original photorealistic time traveling adventure. You play the role of Gage Blackwood, who has seen worldwide fame for saving the word from the evils of time travel in The Journeyman Project. Buried in Time starts with Gage being approached by himself from 10 years in the future. This Gage from the future is sporting a new time travel suit in lieu of using Pegasus (the original time machine) to travel through time to see you. He's distressed but he has no time to explain because other temporal agents are hot on his trail, so he gives you the suit and sends you away. It seems future you has been framed and now you're being accused of crimes against humanity. As a time traveller it's normally your job to observe history but somebody has been altering the past ever so slightly in your assigned places in time to make you look guilty. it's up to you to travel to these location and search for evidence that will clear your name. Buried in Time has a hollywood sci-fi blockbuster plot and it's story will keep you guessing until the very end, the writing is that good.
Graphically Buried in Time is a step above other FMV games of the time. The videos and stills are so sharp and free from artifacting that you're liable to forget that this game is pre-rendered. All enviromental models, texturing and lighting is so realistic that we wouldn't see anything like it rendered in realtime until the xbox. Also, the acting is pretty good for a video game this old and the soundtrack is probably the best heard in a graphic adventure. From a presentation standpoint it's top notch.
Gameplay is typical first person adventure fair, but the puzzles are much more logical than other games in the genre. It doesn't matter if you find the puzzles in Myst to be impossible because the game presents you with challenges that make sense surprisingly from an inventory driven puzzle standpoint. But don't think that the game will be to easy. Finding all the evidence you need will take some clever thinking but just in case you aren't the greatest at adventure games Buried in Time comes complete with a Walkthru mode that will give you hints to keep you going along and eliminate the hardest puzzles alltogether from the game. This not only opens the game for novices but also gives the game an unprecedented amount of replayability because you can play the game again on the harder Adventure mode and find all new challenges in between you and the end of the game. Either way Gage has an AI sidekick that will chime in when he thinks he has something to add. Plus you can even ask for his help when you're truly stumped.
The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time is truly a masterpiece from it's Story to it's Graphics and Gameplay. And now thanks to GOG it's running flawlessly on everyone's Windows machines again. If you're an Adventure lover you owe it to yourself to purchase Buried in Time. If you're not an Adventure game player or have never been able to get into the genre than this is the place to start, don't miss it.
The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time is the sequel to the original photorealistic time traveling adventure. You play the role of Gage Blackwood, who has seen worldwide fame for saving the word from the evils of time travel in The Journeyman Project. Buried in Time starts with Gage being approached by himself from 10 years in the future. This Gage from the future is sporting a new time travel suit in lieu of using Pegasus (the original time machine) to travel through time to see you. He's distressed but he has no time to explain because other temporal agents are hot on his trail, so he gives you the suit and sends you away. It seems future you has been framed and now you're being accused of crimes against humanity. As a time traveller it's normally your job to observe history but somebody has been altering the past ever so slightly in your assigned places in time to make you look guilty. it's up to you to travel to these location and search for evidence that will clear your name. Buried in Time has a hollywood sci-fi blockbuster plot and it's story will keep you guessing until the very end, the writing is that good.
Graphically Buried in Time is a step above other FMV games of the time. The videos and stills are so sharp and free from artifacting that you're liable to forget that this game is pre-rendered. All enviromental models, texturing and lighting is so realistic that we wouldn't see anything like it rendered in realtime until the xbox. Also, the acting is pretty good for a video game this old and the soundtrack is probably the best heard in a graphic adventure. From a presentation standpoint it's top notch.
Gameplay is typical first person adventure fair, but the puzzles are much more logical than other games in the genre. It doesn't matter if you find the puzzles in Myst to be impossible because the game presents you with challenges that make sense surprisingly from an inventory driven puzzle standpoint. But don't think that the game will be to easy. Finding all the evidence you need will take some clever thinking but just in case you aren't the greatest at adventure games Buried in Time comes complete with a Walkthru mode that will give you hints to keep you going along and eliminate the hardest puzzles alltogether from the game. This not only opens the game for novices but also gives the game an unprecedented amount of replayability because you can play the game again on the harder Adventure mode and find all new challenges in between you and the end of the game. Either way Gage has an AI sidekick that will chime in when he thinks he has something to add. Plus you can even ask for his help when you're truly stumped.
The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time is truly a masterpiece from it's Story to it's Graphics and Gameplay. And now thanks to GOG it's running flawlessly on everyone's Windows machines again. If you're an Adventure lover you owe it to yourself to purchase Buried in Time. If you're not an Adventure game player or have never been able to get into the genre than this is the place to start, don't miss it.